The snow outside is melting. Most of it's become "snirt" - snow/dirt. It's ugly. This winter has been beautiful so far, except for the few days I've seen snirt outside. Not only that, but it's melting, so I get to see plenty of mud too. Hopefully we'll get a thick layer of beautiful white snow in a few days to cover it all up.

I can't seem to find pomegranates anywhere, I suppose they must be out of season. I'd love to eat a pomegranate right now, but I might have to wait until next fall. I hope not.

Seems to me like everyone has been talking about the upcoming elections for forever. I don't ever remember all the hubbub about candidates and elections starting so soon, but now that it's election year, things are picking up even more. I figure it's time I started paying attention. My mom asked me yesterday if I was going to vote in the primaries, but I don't think I will. I haven't paid nearly enough attention to cast an educated vote.

If I was voting based on looks, Obama would get my vote.

Okay, now that I've got that out of the way... I'm 18 now, so I do plan on exercising my right to vote in the fall. And I want to do more than just "hur de bur, guise, I is 18 so's I's gonna vote because I can." Politics, however, is something I have always steered away from.

HOLY SHIT GUISE, MY INTERNETS JUST DIED ON ME!

Oh...I accidently flipped my wireless switch. D'oh! Anywho...

I'm a non-confrontational type of person. I prefer to avoid conflict, thus, I avoid bringing up highly-debatable topics. Admittedly, my brother and I will have ridiculous arguments until we're both blue in the face and I'll argue almost relentlessly with my mom, but even then I'm not discussing things like politics, religion, and the like. So far, I just generally go along with whatever my parents believe, and it's not particularly hard to float through life without having strong stances on issues. And, for the most part, I'm undecided, I've heard what my parents have to say, I've heard some of the other side too, but rarely enough to make a decision I feel strongly for. Argument, and debate, often seems pointless to me. I've been around during debates of issues, and neither side is willing to back down, so why bother? Eventually, it usually degenerates to the point where each side's argument gets more and more ridiculous. However, most of the arguments I've been present for have been between high schoolers, so that might explain a thing or two.

Nevertheless, after one semester of college, in which I hope I may have gained some maturity, I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that it might not be such a bad idea to refine and formulate my opinions to the point where I could argue them with someone else. I'm losing some of my reluctance towards the idea of debating issues. I still prefer to listen, and rarely if ever add my opinions. And it'll be a long time before I ever am comfortable holding a position different from my parents and debating that with them. The influence of authority that they hold is far too strong for me to feel comfortable going up against that.

But even so, maybe this is a sign of more maturity? I've spent a semester in college finding out how immature I really am, but that doesn't mean I haven't gotten anything else out of it other than 3 A's, a B and a C for grades.

There's a lot to be said also for "just doing" things. So many opportunities are missed, I think, because we tend to operate within very narrow confines of what we think is acceptable in society. We have an idea but then we think, "no one will ever go for that." And then someone, somewhere else, has the confidence to go for it and see where it takes them, and they end up somewhere good. And then we hear about their success and think, "I wish I would've done that when I thought of it." Of course, for every success story, I'm sure there are many more failures, but in many cases I'm sure the people still got something out of it.

In other words, I need to stop sitting on my ass in front of the computer thinking about all the things I want or should do, and get out there and do them! I'm going to start with going out to feed animals.